A Most Unusual Case
by Hahukum Konn
Summary: Crossover between Asimov's Robot Novels and the HP Books Harry Potter's been the victim of one of Voldemort's plots. Elijah Baley gets called in to figure out what's going on. PostHBP, ignores TDH.
1. A Boy Is Discovered

**A Most Unusual Case**  
Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J. K. Rowling or Isaac Asimov.

For those familiar with the Robot Novels, this story takes place after The Naked Sun, but before The Robots of Dawn. Notes on terminology - "Medieval" era in the time of Elijah Baley refers to roughly the 20th century.

* * *

Elijah Baley hated airplanes.

He particularly hated _this_ airplane. Nine hours cooped up in a tin can with barely an inch of metal between him and the Outside had rubbed his nerves raw. He had been just about to give up his white-knuckled attempt to retain his grip on himself, and order the steward-robot to give him a sedative that would knock him out, when he heard the most blessed thing in the entire world, even though it was spoken by a flat, efficient metallic voice through a speaker:

"This vehicle will be landing at London shortly. Please remain in your seat until we instruct you to debark."

Baley breathed a shaky sigh of relief and concentrated on the book-film he was desultorily attempting to read about Medieval Britain.

/\/\

Getting settled in was quite straightforward. After debarking, Baley went to the Out-of-City Visitors' Processing Center, and presented his Rating Card, designating him as New York City Plainclothesman Elijah Baley, class C-7, along with his transit tickets stating his assignment to the Metropolitan London Police on detached duty for a special case.

The severe-looking woman on the other side of the counter entered the particulars of his information in the practiced fingerprint-binary he recalled seeing the woman at the Section Kitchen use the one time he and Daneel Olivaw had had to dine away from his home Section. Shortly after his Transient's Passkey was available, entitling him to food privileges at the Vistor's Section Kitchen along with a functional one-room apartment and access to a private stall in the nearby Men's Personal.

Earth had become a homogeneous society to the point where the only major difference that marked off one region of the planet from another was the general distribution of skin color and perhaps some vanishing remnant of "local flavour" which amounted to useless trinkets in cheap souvenir shops, or ethnic foods on the rare times when the chemists and zymologists got creative enough to research long-forgotten foods.

So it was of no consequence to one Elijah Baley that the great City of London, roofed-over from the East End all the way out to a place like Surrey, looked and felt very much like New York City. Even the people in London had largely lost the famed "English accent"; everybody on Earth spoke an essentially homogenized Interstellar English.

It was, however, an amazing shock to a boy named Harry Potter.

/\/\

Harry had been having a bad day. He'd been hoping Rufus Scrimgeour would be a sight better than that idiot Fudge, when it turned out all he wanted was a poster boy for the War against Voldemort even after Dumbledore's death.

Then his relatives had to start in on him, _again_, about the inconvenience Vernon Dursley underwent in actually deigning to fetch Harry from King's Cross, even though Harry had heatedly explained at the dinner table that he would be gone inside of a month and they'd never have to see him again after that.

Dinner had thus proved to be a very tense adventure, broken when Harry grabbed his dinner plate and marched up to his bedroom, heedless of the insistence by his Aunt Petunia that he "return AT ONCE to the table and not leave dirty dishes lying about in the bedroom!"

_Annoying woman_, he thought.

After wolfing down the rest of his food and carelessly letting his plate clatter on the rickety desk set in one corner of the room, Harry flopped on the poor excuse for a bed his relatives had let him have, and wondered how in the blazes he would find any Horcruxes, or anything of that sort. The one Horcrux he thought he'd gotten due to hard work on Dumbledore's behalf had turned out to be a ruddy _fake_!

Disgusted, Harry lay back on his bed, heedless of the fact that a certain Lord Voldemort was busily engaged in a ritual to attempt a most vicious and underhanded trick on Harry Potter.

Unfortunately, Voldemort's attempt to use a Temporal Shifting spell, combined with a Lunar Phase potion, clashed with the protective wards on the Dursley residence, and instead of Harry being wrenched into a parallel universe, leaving Voldemort free to complete the job started by Severus Snape, he was instead tossed about three thousand years into the future.

As a result, Harry had a ghost of a chance to get back to when he came from… and Voldemort found, too late, that the magical ritual's clash with the protective wards had a slightly unfortunate side effect of disintegrating the flesh-and-blood body he inhabited. This staved off destruction of the wizarding world for a time, as Voldemort became, yet again, a disembodied spirit.

Death Eaters found it rather hard to be afraid of the Cruciatus Curse being cast by a spirit without a wand, and one Draco Malfoy seized the second chance he'd been given, went to Hermione Granger, and revealed all he knew of the Death Eaters' current strongholds.

But that story does not concern us overmuch; suffice it to say that without the Boy-Who-Lived immediately available, but also without a bodily-formed Lord Voldemort to tell his Death Eaters to terrorize the British populace, a stalemate was reached, until Voldemort himself became a long-forgotten memory, as the two remaining members of the Golden Trio managed to destroy all the remaining Horcruxes by the time Voldemort was sufficiently strong enough to try and regain a body; with only one-seventh of a soul, Voldemort could not reliably ensure his immortality, and in time, he did disappear.

Unfortunately, the Death Eaters were not immediately quelled upon the disastrous conclusion of the ritual, and the loss of the Chosen One hampered the effectiveness of the Order of the Phoenix. As a result far too many people died who would have lived had Harry been around, and the magical world of Britain stultified and degenerated past the point of any useful recognition.

/\/\

Elijah Baley was greeted in the Metropolitan Police office by an astonishingly red-haired Detective named Ronald Granger. The man was saying, "Unlike in New York, we don't use the civil-service classifications; you'll be given equal status to me, as a plain-clothes detective. We use the normal police ranks from Constable on up to Chief, and you probably still use them in New York."

Baley had fumbled in his pockets for his pipe, before remembering he'd quit smoking not long after he'd come back from Solaria. The rations were just getting too thin, and even at a C-7 rating, the writing was on the wall; Earth couldn't maintain the tobacco crop _and_ sustain the health of a populace which was affected by the various ills tobacco tended to visit upon people. So at some point, Baley would have been forced to quit anyway; at least this way he could somewhat pretend he was doing this entirely of his own accord.

He dourly sighed and said, "We do use the same ranks in New York. But what I'm wondering about is why I've been called half-way across the planet when none of my superiors could tell me a thing. The last time this happened, I found myself on a space-ship headed for Solaria."

The other man nervously tittered and said, "Well, rest assured, Plainclothesman Baley, there'll be none of that here. However, the fact is we have a _very_ unusual case, and… well, to be honest, you have kind of a reputation for making sense of unusual cases."

Baley grimaced as he remembered the sheer dumb luck that had gotten him noticed by practically all levels of the Earth governmental apparatus. Thanks to Julius Enderby's need for an old college buddy to hopefully manipulate during the investigation of a Spacer murder on Earth, the Solarians had gotten interested when they needed an Earthman to solve a baffling murder case; on that occasion, it had been a fortuitous coincidence. The man in charge of Security there had no doubt that the one suspect had done the crime (and in a way, Gladia Delmarre _had_ committed murder; however, she had been under such severe stress that she did not recall the actual act, and in an Earth court, she likely would have been remanded for an indefinite period to a Mentological Facility), but he needed an Earthman to chase down a conspiracy on Solaria that could have resulted in Galactic war.

Both times, Baley had come up smelling like a rose, since he'd solved both cases and neatly wrapped things up for the authorities to handle. In particular, on Solaria, he'd defused a prickly political problem and helped get rid of an embarrassment to the Solarian officials, by pinning the blame on the instigator of the murder, Jothan Leebig, while arranging to have Gladia transported to Aurora, to make a new life under the protective wing of Dr. Han Fastolfe. Murderer and unwitting accomplice were thus both gone, and the Solarians could go on pretending they had a perfect society.

So, here he was, in London. He'd had a chance to shower and freshen up before tackling this case, so he at least was presentable and put forth a good, if generally dour, impression.

Baley said, "So, what's the case?"

Granger said, "Well, it's this. Follow me and I'll do the case summary."

The red-haired man plugged a cassette from the merc-pool file into a hand-held pad that was about the size of a standard sheet of paper. A person from Harry Potter's time might have called it an Etch-A-Sketch, but it was far more advanced than that.

In a monotone, Granger began reciting the particulars.

"At approximately 0900 two days ago, two of the Metropolitan officials stationed near Surrey reported seeing an unusual flash, followed by the appearance of a disoriented-looking teenager with black hair and striking green eyes. The boy was wearing clothing that seems to be completely different from any modern arrangement of such, and computer analysis of the fibers and so on reveal the use of materials that are crude synthetics compared to modern nano-construction methods. They do not appear to have been custom-sized to fit the wearer, and indeed seem to be a bit large for his frame.

"In addition, he wore old-style glasses—"

Baley broke in, remembering. "My old superior, Julius Enderby… he liked to wear them, too. You sure the kid isn't just a Medievalist? While they're unregistered, it's not illegal to be one if you're not actively plotting against the Government."

Granger went on, grinning. "Just wait, Baley. I'm getting to the good stuff. To give you a better idea of where the boy was found, you should know that the Surrey district of London is a large monolithic block of level upon level of residential sections. It's largely populated by people with some classification status, so they're not declassified laborers nor are they top-status officials. So even some things you or I might consider ordinary are a bit unusual in those districts.

"So, as I said, the boy is wearing clothes that are manufactured using methods that probably date back to Medieval times, wearing old glasses in the fashion of Medievalists. He was, as I said, quite disoriented and confused. He was clutching a piece of wood—"

"_Real_ wood? As in, from an actual tree? Not the more usual yeast-derived petrochemical-based plastic synthetics?"

"I swear it, Baley. Honest wood. Anyway, the boy was quite defensive, clearly believing anyone to be a threat. Now, luckily, the Metro Official had the presence of mind to activate his Evidence Recorder, which contains a full audio and visual record of the incident."

Granger fell silent for a moment, and walked with Baley through the seemingly endless, impersonal corridors. He spotted a meeting room, snagged Baley's elbow, and swiftly shut the door behind the two of them. He quickly pushed some buttons on the wall panel after sticking his thumb on a featureless black plate, then turned back.

"Baley, what I'm about to say cannot go beyond you or me. So far, the only people who know what happened are the Metropolitan Police Officer, his partner, me, and now you. I've activated the anti-spybeam controls. Anyone trying to eavesdrop will get static. I have the record here. Watch."

Baley sat near the table, waiting in anticipation for the holographic record to play out.

_The black-haired boy, clearly frightened and suspicious, was saying, "You bastards are from Voldemort, aren't you? This is a trick, damn it!"_

With a start, Baley said, "Pause it!"

Granger said, "You noticed. That boy's accent is like nothing I've ever heard. It isn't Spacer and it sure isn't Earth. Mind, we can't actually ask a Spacer if he's one of them. They'd be insulted that Earthmen were deigning to communicate at all. Nonetheless we've got experts who were played just a small sample of that voice, no visual, and they agreed it wasn't Spacer."

Baley nodded to continue.

_The boy's nostrils were flaring as his hand gripped a piece of wood. His image jiggled slightly as the policeman breathed (he had been wearing the Evidence Recorder at about chest level), while the policeman's partner attempted to get closer to the boy._

_The other man said, "Calm down, okay? Just calm down. We're not going to hurt you."_

"_Easy for you to say, you bastard. You're not the one that just got Portkeyed, or forcibly Apparated, or… or _something_, from his bed to here! Now get out of my way or I'll take you down with me! Both of you!"_

_At that point, the other man seemed to make a decision, and removed what Baley knew was a neuronic whip from the holster._

_Unbelievably, the boy's reflexes were much faster, and even before the man had finished drawing his whip, the boy yelled, "Stupefy! Obliviate!"_

_Two flashes of light came out of the piece of wood, striking the other man full-on in the chest. A split-second later, the hologram showed the barrel of a neuronic whip come into view, and the beam struck the boy. He fell to the ground, screaming._

At this point, it was a pure formality as the boy's piece of wood was confiscated, and he was handcuffed. The Evidence Recorder hologram died, and Baley turned to Granger.

He said, "I take it you're hushing this up because the boy's... whatever it is… is clearly a lethal weapon of some kind?"

"Not only that. Get this, Baley. When we managed to reawaken Officer Miles – the one you saw who went down – he remembered _nothing_ about the incident. He swears he woke up that morning, and then the next thing he knew, he was waking up in the hospital. Also, the boy mumbled something unusual when Officer Travers took him to be processed. He said, 'where did you get a gun that can cast the Crushattus Curse?'"

Baley said, "I have no idea how to get a handle on this. What the hell is a Crushattus, and what _is_ that piece of wood?"

Granger shook his head again. He said in an exasperated tone, "No idea, Baley. It's hollow, and has some kind of feather inside of it. No analysis we can come up with has brought any resolution to exactly how it has the properties it does. Just to see if I could do anything with it, I took the piece of wood, went into a private room, and tried yelling those things he said. Nothing came out of the wood. Just to see if I needed a human being, I even tried pointing it at Travers and I said, 'Stupefy', since it seemed reasonable that all it does is stun someone. The 'Obliviate' seems to do the memory erasure.

"Well, you can guess – nothing happened. You have to come see the boy, Baley. We need to get to the bottom of this. For the last couple of days we've had the boy in a secure isolation wing with strict instructions to all staff to not speak to him in any way. We've had him under surveillance, of course, but the tapes don't show much as far as him saying anything. He made one comment I find curious, though. He said to himself at one point, 'When did Death Eaters learn Muggle technology, and how come everything looks so advanced?'"

Baley found his curiosity piqued. He said, "That's it; I _have_ to see this kid for myself."

"Well, if you can solve this, we'll recommend that you get a C-8 over in New York."

"Lead the way, Detective Granger."

/\/\

Elijah Baley looked at the holding cell the boy was in. Plain white walls, plain white ceilings. Soft indirect lighting. Force barrier behind the entry door. You needed an access code to open the door, then you had to enter another code to bring the barrier down.

The cell itself had a desk with two chairs, all made of plastic and molded into the floor to make it impossible to move them or use them to threaten anyone. The cot was similarly constructed.

Detective Granger had gone up to the surveillance room to watch from afar. He'd made it clear that this was Baley's show.

Standing before the twinkling force barrier, Baley regarded the black-haired boy. He was sleeping, but did not seem to be sleeping very restfully. He tossed and turned, muttering every now and then. Sighing, Baley entered the code to lower the force barrier. It was set to automatically come back on, and the only way to then get out was if you had the special police-issue neutralizer, which Baley made sure that he had on him, in a safe place.

After carefully sitting on the chair facing the bed, Baley said, "Kid, wake up."

The reaction was startling, if instantaneous. The boy snapped to full wakefulness in a split second, and with a sharp intake of breath, he swiftly looked around, then realized where he was, and glared at Baley.

He sneered (where does a boy learn to act like a hardened criminal, thought Baley) and said, "Oh, a new Death Eater, I see. Tell Voldemort he can sod off for all I care. I'm not telling you a _fucking_ thing."

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I don't even know your name. And who's Voldemort?"

Disbelief crossed the boy's face before his mask returned. Barking a laugh, he said, "Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. You actually think I'll fall for that stupid trick? What the hell are you keeping me here for, if not to eventually hand me over to your precious _Dark Lord_?"

In honest puzzlement, Baley said, "Why would I do that?"

"Why wouldn't you, indeed? Unless you're planning to keep me here for yourself so you can hog all the glory next Death Eater meeting. Show up old Severus Snape that way, eh? Tell that greasy bastard killing Dumbledore will be the _least_ of his worries by the time I get out of here!"

Baley forced himself to remain calm as he said, "Let's start over, here. I'm Elijah Baley, Plainclothesman C-7, from New York City."

The boy seemed to wilt a bit as he said, "Shit. You've infiltrated the fucking Muggle police."

Baley ignored that, saying, "What's your name?"

"_My_ name?" The boy guffawed. "Fuck me, you blokes really _are_ thick, aren't you? You remember me, don't you? Bloody Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Die-to-Please-Voldemort, Harry James Potter!"

"That's your name, then?"

"Yes, that bloody well is my sodding name. My _Mudblood_ mother was Lily Evans, and my _Pureblood_ father was James Potter. Anything else you stupid bastards need clarified about me?"

Baley was stumped. How could he establish any level of trust with the boy when he was clearly paranoid and delusional? Nothing he said made any _sense_, damn it!

How the hell was he going to get it through to this kid that they just wanted to find out what he was doing in the Surrey district of London?

* * *

Author Notes:

I got this idea after re-reading the Robot Novels by Asimov. How _would_ Elijah Baley, Earth detective, find a way to get through to Harry Potter? And if he believes the boy, how in the world would they send him back? It's also my first attempt at a crossover. Normally I object to them, but this plot bunny refused to let me go :)


	2. A Boy Is Interrogated

**A Most Unusual Case**  
Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J. K. Rowling or Isaac Asimov.

* * *

Elijah Baley decided to step out of the cell and gather his thoughts. He saw Detective Granger coming down the hall, and he said, "You got all that, right?"

"Sure did. Now that we have a name, we can cross-check his fingerprints and DNA. We tried before, but without his name the computer couldn't provide a match. Maybe we'll have better luck now."

Unfortunately for the pair, running the name Harry Potter and asking for a cross-check with provided samples of his fingerprints and a hair sample produced exactly zero results. Oh, there were plenty of Harry Potters in London and even some of the other large Cities scattered around what had once been Medieval Britain, but none had his fingerprints and exact DNA match. Even worldwide, absolutely nothing of any use came up.

A boy without a registered identity on Earth. A boy who waved a piece of wood and who could damage people with it, potentially lethally. A boy who insisted on uttering apparently paranoid comments regarding imagined events and people that had no bearing on the real world. By rights the Police should just dump him in a Mentological Facility and be done with it.

Just out of curiosity, the men ran the other names the Potter boy had mentioned – "Severus Snape" and "Voldemort". Understandably, the latter name revealed nothing. There were a few Snapes, but none named Severus. The photographs showed nothing that seemed to strike Baley or Granger as unusual, but on a hunch, Baley asked for reproductions of the pictures to be put on a holo-display cube.

They went back down to the cell, and before Granger could go up to the observation room to watch the cell, Baley said, "I want you to talk to him, too, just in case. He might be willing to open up to _someone_."

The other detective nodded, and the two of them entered the cell. It had been about an hour since Baley had left, and the boy hadn't changed position. However, what startled both men was when Harry looked up, then blinked, then yelped, "_Ron?_ What are you _doing_ here? Wait a minute – you look different, somehow."

Detective Granger looked at Harry and said, "Should I know you?"

Crestfallen, Harry slumped against the wall on his cot and said, "They got you too, didn't they?"

"You're… uh, Harry Potter, according to my colleague Detective Baley here. My name's Detective Ronald Granger, Plainclothesman for the Metropolitan London Police."

At that, the boy looked disbelievingly at the detective and whispered, "_Granger?_ Oh Lord, this is fucked up. This is completely fucked up."

Baley broke in, saying, "Look. If you're settled down now, why don't you tell us who you are and how you came to be in Surrey, London, two days ago."

Harry said, "_That_ was Little Whinging? What is going _on_ here?"

Baley sighed. The boy was clearly still agitated, and he wasn't a trained psychologist. He said, "All right. First, what's this about my colleague Detective Granger here?"

Baley could see the boy's Adam's Apple move as he swallowed, hard, and spoke softly. "All right, I'll talk. I've got a friend, named Ron Weasley. Well, Ronald Weasley. He has blazing red hair, just like yours, and his girlfriend is Hermione Granger. You even look like him, a bit."

The two detectives raised eyebrows at each other, then Baley said, "All right. Now, back to you. Who are you?"

"My name is Harry James Potter. I don't know my rank or serial number, so I won't tell you that. I live in Little Whinging, Surrey, at Number Four, Privet Drive."

Baley nodded at the other detective, who clearly had gotten the notion to check things out. Before he could continue, Harry said, "What's going on? What's happening?"

"Detective Granger's going to check out that location you gave. Now, where do you attend school – if you do?"

"Hogwarts. It's a school up in Scotland."

_Scotland, Scotland..._ why did that sound familiar?

Baley let the matter ride and kept talking.

"Does that have anything to do with how you pointed a piece of wood at a gentleman and stunned him, then wiped his memory? We tried a Psychic Probe, and couldn't get anything except a hazy recollection of being attacked by you."

"Yeah. You mean you don't know what a wand is, or... oh, _shit!_"

The boy's hand flew up to his mouth, and he then placed his head in his hands and said, "Fuck me. Why do I _always_ open my fucking mouth before thinking? God, Snape would have a field day if he was watching this."

Baley, perplexed, said, "What's this all about?"

When no answer came, he said, firmly, "If you're a member of an unregistered organization devoted to overthrow of our Government, then you've already confessed to having access to unregistered weapons, and there's the charges we can use already, regarding attacking a police officer. You could spend quite a few years in the prison levels, you know."

Harry seemed shocked, then said, "What? We're not trying to overthrow bloody anybody except Voldemort, although kicking over the Ministry wouldn't be a bad idea right about now, what with that idiot Fudge and that opportunist Scrimgeour."

Sighing, Baley continued. "Never mind. Go on. You've already broken whatever secrecy you promised someone, so you may as well continue."

The green-eyed boy looked down at the floor, and mumbled, "I'm sorry about that. I honestly thought I was about to be attacked and taken to Voldemort. I was on my bed in my bedroom, when all of a sudden there was this immense flash of white light, and I was tumbling through this... tunnel? And then before I knew it, I landed in this corridor with numerous doors and locks. Your two blokes saw me, and managed to corner me pretty neatly. I tried stunning one then using a Memory Charm, hoping I could get away. Whatever your other bloke did, it felt like the Crushattus Curse."

Baley said, "Mind spelling that? What's a Memory Charm? What's a Crushattus Curse?"

Harry looked startled, and said, "Er.. well, it's C-r-u-c-i-a-t-u-s, and it's one of the three Unforgivable Curses. If you use one on someone else, you can get sent to Azkaban."

Elijah was having trouble keeping ahead of all this new jargon and information. Hopefully the psychology boys could make something of this kid's torrent of statements.

"Ok, hold on. So you thought the officer's neuronic whip was this... Curse?"

"Yeah. It hurts like hell, and I've been hit with it a few times. The other Unforgivables are the Imperius and the Killing Curses. Imperius lets you control someone else's mind, and the Killing Curse does... well, what it says."

"And Memory Charms?"

"What you'd expect. You use them to wipe out someone else's memory of a specific event, or if you have enough magical control, you can actually expunge quite a lot in the way of memories."

Baley, gobsmacked, said, "Hold on. Did you say _magic_?"

"Um, yeah. Look, bring me my wand. I promise I won't use it to try and kill you, or anything. It might not even work; there's a lot of electrical stuff in this area, it seems, and magic and electricity don't work well together."

Baley sat back, resting his head against the wall, trying to absorb what the boy was saying. If he hadn't seen that holographic record of the boy's attack, he would have put the whole thing down to an extremely complicated paranoid delusional complex in the boy, and suggested a transfer to the psychologists and mentologists. But he _had_ seen it, and he was quite certain the boy's other statements had at least some kind of truth to them.

The question was, could he trust the kid? The boy _had_ reacted violently when accosted, but if his words could be taken at face value, he could just as easily have killed Officer Miles, and if his reflexes had been any swifter, or if Travers had been a second slower on the draw, the second man might well have joined him.

He made a decision, and hoped he hadn't signed some death warrants. Upon stepping into the hallway, he saw Detective Granger returning. The red-haired man said in a low voice, "There's no address or location by the name of Privet Drive, let alone Number Four, in recent history. The last known use of that address before the Residential levels went in was at least a couple thousand years ago, and I only know this because I happened across some archival paperwork relating to compensation and expropriation for construction of the City."

Baley nodded, and said, "Bring the boy's piece of wood, would you? I'll personally guarantee his behavior."

Granger looked at him askance, and said, "Well, all right. It's your funeral, though, if he escapes because of this. You've seen what that kid can do."

Baley nodded, and said, "The boy admits he can kill someone with it. But without the neutralizer, he can't get through. Bring me the piece of wood, then you stay outside and manually operate the force barrier when I want to leave. I'll give you my neutralizer now. Keep your blaster ready."

Granger nodded, and pocketed Baley's neutralizer as he went back to the Evidence Storage Room to get Harry's wand. He returned shortly, handing it to Baley as he operated the controls to let Baley back into the cell.

Once inside and seated, Baley watched the boy carefully for any sign that he was about to attack. The plainclothesman said, "All right. I'm taking a risk here by bringing this to you. Detective Granger here tried to use this thing, and it didn't respond to him at all. I'm willing to bet if I try to use it, there won't be any effect at all."

The teenage captive nodded slowly. He said, "Can you put something small on the table?"

Baley took out a half-credit piece and plunked it on the plastic table, then carefully handed the wand to Harry. He said, "The boys ran every scan they could think of on that stick of wood. They were pushing to cut it open and take out the feather in it, but Detective Granger told them no."

Fearfully, Harry held his wand close up and examined it from all angles.

Reassuringly, Baley said, "They absolutely were not anywhere close to cutting it in any way. Without the Detective's express authorization, they wouldn't have done it. I take it that keeping the thing together is crucial?"

"Absolutely! If you cut a wand open it'd be like... I dunno, taking out the bullets from your gun, or something. Anyway, do you mind if I demonstrate with this?"

Baley moved into a corner, and said, "Detective Granger has my instruction to blast you if you try to escape. I don't even have the neutralizer to let me cross that force barrier, so don't think you can try anything funny."

Harry said, "I won't."

He pointed the wand at the half-credit piece, made a kind of curved movement upwards, then sharply flicked it about an inch downward, saying "_Wingardium Leviosa._"

And the half-credit piece lifted off the table.

A few seconds later, it clattered to the table, as Harry muttered, "_Finite_."

He turned the wand around, end for end, and plunked it on the table.

"There's my demonstration and show of good faith, gentlemen. I'm a wizard."

* * *

Author Notes:

So, another chapter. :) Unsure if this plot bunny has any long-term value, but it's an interesting exploration of Baley's interaction with a strange individual.


End file.
